Archives for December 2016

There’s nothing better, in your eyes, nothing better in the world than an hour of twirling to music in your room. Alone, nothing to worry about, no motives or pressures—you dance for the sake of dancing and nothing else matters. You deep-cleaned your room a year or two ago, so you have enough space and a visible dance floor. And you’re happy in that hour, voices and beats washing over you like waves over sand. But you have to be quiet about it, because your parents might find you kicking in a circle like a plucked chicken in your room.

You’re not sure what to make of your parents. Sometimes they love you, and sometimes they hate you, and you don’t do drugs or drink alcohol or shoplift so you assume that they’re at least marginally proud of you. But you can never be sure. Maybe they think you’re crazy. You definitely know that they still think of you as a kid—but they like to ask you whether you’ll major in biomedical engineering, and no one asks a kid those kind of questions.

When you were small, your mother fed you almanacs and math books like tax returns into a paper shredder. She told you it’ll make you smarter, but you struggle to earn A-minuses at each semester’s end. She said, you’re a prodigy, honey, but a prodigy has to live up to her parents’ standards, and parents want more than a daughter who receives A-minuses. They want a one-hundred-pound model with Einstein’s brains, and you are only a pig with fecal matter for a mind. The state of your room back then proved your state of being. You lived in a pigsty, your dad told you, so you gritted your teeth and pulled some heavy-duty garbage bags from the kitchen cabinet. But you still felt like a pig afterwards, fat and lumbering, slobbery and idiotic.

Your mother would be angry at you if you threw away the family scale, because she says it reminds you that you need to lose weight. Your thighs are gargantuan and your arms rival those of an alpha gorilla’s. She tells you to play a sport, so you sign up for track and field in the spring. But who told you to weight-lift? Pick a more feminine sport.

Why are your friends so stupid? Pick better ones. It is not enough, now, that your friends don’t smoke marijuana. She jokingly asks for their transcripts and you laugh, empty.

In eighth grade, you had a boyfriend for three months. It was puppy love, nothing serious; you tell yourself that it wouldn’t have lasted much longer, anyway. You told him that he was too good for you. But your mother thought you were too good for him. She drove him home once, and when you got home she turned and told you that she’d already figured out his character. You dumped him the day after Valentine’s Day; you avoid him in the halls and he doesn’t talk to you anymore. But your mother is happy, and that is what matters. You aren’t good enough for her, but you’re too good for him.

Your parents’ expectations are taller than the stratosphere. And yet you can’t fail your kin, no matter how inadequate you are. You’re just going to have to shed more pounds, read more books, study with more fervor. You love your parents, and you’ll fulfill their wishes if it kills you.

Classical music makes you smarter, said a health expert in a video your mother forwarded to you. Her second text read so do it! You listen to Mozart and Dvorak until your brain bleeds key changes. Classical music will get you to an Ivy League, she says, so you replace your Fall Out Boy playlist with Beethoven. The best way to lose weight is dancing in your room, your mother said. You’ll be having fun and shedding pounds. So now you twirl to a playlist to shed pounds. And you twirl to classical music.

B. Jang is a high school junior with a passion for literature, particularly poetry and ​historical fiction. A member of her high school debate team and a political intern, she is deeply interested in helping to bring the flaws of society to light. Jang enjoys reading, playing the violin, and weightlifting. She really likes penguins.

“ Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives.”Carl Sagan

Welcome to Issue Four —it’s exciting to be able to bring you another round of creative work for this final issue of 2016. Blue Marble was founded in late 2015 with the intent of being a “creative collective.” We put out the call to young writers, photographers and artists to send us their best work— and the results have exceeded expectations. What a great year it’s been reading submissions.

To our young writers and artists: we hear you. Thanks for your work, your opinions, your emails, as well as the tech help and suggestions you offered.It’s an honor to read your work and we’re grateful so many of you have discovered and are enjoying the journal.We’ll continue quarterly publication in 2017, and plan to start out the year with a poetry-only supplement appearing online in mid-January.

**With a few small grants and donations we continue to be able to pay all our published writers for their work. However this issue has its very own benefactor.Many thanks for the kindness of our “December donor” who was generous enough to cover the cost of paying all published contributors. (Thank you A!) Your generosity is humbling, inspires us to continue working hard, and we’re proud that your donation goes entirely to our writers.

And speaking of benefactors, we’ve had a year of beautiful art on our homepage thanks to Minneapolis artist Chris Howard, who seems to have just the right image for every issue. Thank you Chris.

Looking from the earth, the cloud is humdrum:
the weathermen know how to answer it.
But within, it must be electric and stirring
because Lake Erie pulls on it full weight,
because the oaks lust for a touch, a drink;
the cloud floats, swift, battle-ready
to heaven’s alcove
where the redwoods come to brush on it
and whisper.

I see sparks bolt and branch
when two clouds converge
But a zephyr often waits
over there—just behind that hill
to blow out the cotton-ball candle
flames, burning fervent yet
ever so brief.

Go above a cloud
that would be my way.

Alena Zhang is currently a junior at Newark Academy in NJ. She has been published in Cicada, and her work has been nationally recognized in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her hobbies include overthinking and spending time doing things other than homework.

It is December
The frigid wind cuts my cheeks
Sadness creeps up behind me like a lion stalking its prey
It’s January
The snow is pressed against the door
I do not want to leave the house anyway
Because the sadness has caught up to me
It’s February
Then it’s March
Months pass like clockwork
The sadness has morphed from a small pest to a horrific monster
The cold seems to be endless
However one late March day
The grass seems greener
I noticed a tulip poking it’s head through the dirt
The sun is warm on my skin
The air smells of summer and ice cream and the beach
It is April
And I am happy

Talia Botelho is seventeen years old and loves writing and reading. She also dances and plays the flute in her free time.

And yet I contaminate the contents of my host, adjusting my bulges into her white framed skull.

She sits there now.

Pregnant. With fears.

I’ve always known how to make an entry.

I’ll crouch in, shrouded as a logical deduction.

A mathematical certainty.

But beneath the pathetic veil of it all, a mere byproduct of my host’s suspicions; a mental manifestation of her insecurities.

Some days we get along, and some days we act like strangers, while she plays hopscotch with her gut feelings.

That’s all the relationship I’ve ever had; a parasitic existence.

Always the runner up.

The two in a world of ones.

A leftover, scavenging for the spotlight.

The aftermath of her calculations.

Silently seeing how comfortable she becomes with the temporary.

How answers are most valued at the time of their respective questions. And how I’m needed only when those answers can’t make it.

I can hear the colours she’s seeing. Obnoxious reds with screaming oranges.

I’ve seen contentment, and it bored me.

But before I start the chaos, I must honour the peace.

It’s only polite .

Mehar Haleem is a seventeen-year-old student who writes for the editorial board of her school. She has previously won several creative writing competitions and her works have been published/ are going to be published in the forthcoming issues of Alexandria Quarterly, The Noisy Island, Sprout and Inklette. She currently lives in New Delhi , India.

I took these photos in the northwest part of China. I am a high school senior in China who was born in the United States, and current Director of my school’s Digital Video Club. Since picking up a camera at ten years old, I have become passionate about using photography to record memories for the future. Wherever I go, I have my camera on hand.

When I saw this crystal-blue sky, I was so impressed at first sight that I had to capture the amazing sight of the snowy mountains against the sky. At the time, I was traveling in Tibet. I felt the distinctive culture, full of factors extracted from Buddhism. People in Tibet wore traditional clothes and silver ornaments on their heads; their attitudes were open and full of willingness to help a tourist like myself. After viewing the lively street and appreciating the grandiose architecture, I felt I could understand the spirit of the land. Standing under the mountain, feeling the winds carrying the scent of soil, I felt calm and relieved.

Megan Guo is a senior at Hangzhou No.2 High School in China. She was born in the United States and moved to China with her family at a young age. As Director of the Digital Video Club and a class reporter for the student body, she is passionate about using photography and videography to record memories for the future. Whether at her school’s annual Sports Competition or traveling around China, it is rare to find her without a camera in hand.